Blogging About Blogging Again

Oh, the pressure’s on. Since announcing that I’m taking requests for topics on which to blog, three have come in. Unless a flood of more than nine great ideas arrive, I will be doing posts on the following suggestions over the next few days.

1. From a professor whose background is in rhetoric, composition, and all sorts of intimidating ways to describe written communication, a gem she encountered during her days scoring SAT essays, “What makes a good friend?”

2. From a woman who has been a writing instructor of mine for years (and more recently has become someone I’m honored to call a friend), this prompt: Take one moment (it might be the color of the sea) and what grows out of that moment. . . let it evolve on the page. This came after I posted the Bermuda pics, so I’m going to pull a moment from that trip.

3. From a man who was the youth pastor at my church when I was about 12 years old, whose humor and intelligence on FB regularly delight me, a follow up to #1, “Write about whether you’d rather have a zombie as a friend or a vampire.”

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Open Call Continues . . . Let me know if you’ve got any requests.
This is not to say I don’t have plenty of ideas of my own. Not to sound arrogant, but I’ve got lists of plans for posts. I keep track of those unfulfilled promises, you know. In the meantime, some reader participation will be fun; don’t you think?

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Full disclosure ~ When I sat down to write today, I intended to dive into #1. “What makes a good friend?”

I know full well that the hungover, flat-stomached teenagers with suntanned feet and the keys to Daddy’s Lexus in their pockets have only 25 minutes to crank out a hand-written essay after receiving the prompt. Here, I’ve had days already to mull it over. Plus, I’ve got this handy dandy dictionary that pops up in the corner of my screen and helps me verify that yes, “mull” is what I meant to say.

But I’m a coward. I just googled “How to Write an SAT Essay” and began a crash course at SparkNotes. I know the suggestion wasn’t to actually write an SAT essay, it was merely inspired by the topic. But what if what I come up with is an incoherent mess?

Here I call myself a “writer,” yet I just can’t imagine writing a “6” essay. That’s a score. Did you know that? I didn’t know that. The last time I took a clear position on a topic, it was a messy incident.

What the hell are PhD’s doing reading this blog anyway? I need to go back to school. Will my “3” essay (“shows developing competence“–that’s me, in perpetual development) earn my acceptance into a good grad school? And how will I pay the tuition?

Earlier today, I was in the middle of my too many cups of coffee and turned to Andy with, “I think the cats might be getting too thin.” Two months ago, I worried that Ell-kitty was too heavy. Five minutes later, “I’m concerned about our lack of earthquake preparedness.” To which, he aptly replied, “Honey, pick an anxiety. Just one.” I took a shower instead.

To whom it may concern: my 12 days of blogging are over. I realize that (a) I missed last night and today …. so it was really only 10 days, and (b) I have yet to fulfill requests 2 and 3 above….. but I will. I’ve got notes, outlines, a veritable mind map. Just as soon as return from NY, I’m all over it.